Opposing Mentalities
by Naito Tenshi
Summary: Two-in-one character study. The idea seemed better before I wrote it. Oh well. My first attempt ever at anything of this style. Please read and review?


Opposing Mentalities

Naito Tenshi

            Who am I?

            Such a foolish question. Is it any matter, honestly? Whoever I was at the beginning of my life has long been lost. Memories locked off, perhaps my own doing, perhaps that of my dear master. In any case, they are of no significance. Those were days I do not desire to remember, before I was enlightened and came into the realization of my own worthlessness. And any memory is meaningless to me, for I am not an individual; to be one, I would have to be my own person, to have a will of my own, my own desires and aspirations. And these are things which are entirely absent from my conscious thought. My wills and desires are those of my master, my person is not my own, for I belong to him. I am his property, an object, a tool for his use.

            And my only aspiration is to please him.

            This can, of course, never be achieved; I am not capable of doing so, for I am only a human, and unlike the rest of my kind, I know my place. I have been taught, and have taken these lessons to heart most eagerly. I have adopted them as my own beliefs; the only belief structure I need. I am obsolete, inferior, and ultimately disposable. One day that shall be fully realized, and I would lie to say that I did not anticipate it. It might make my master happy, I should hope, to have me destroyed, for though I dedicate myself to him and to his cause so fully, I am still that which he seeks to eradicate, and there is only so far I can rise above the others of my kind, and even the very top of that level of humanity is still so far below him that it is impossible to think he could place any value on my life.

            Besides that fact, I know too well for my own preference that there is only one he values the same as he loves himself.

            And that one… is the one who refuses him. It is clear to me what a fool he is, to think that defying the master could do any more than to simply put off the inevitable. Destruction comes to destructive beings; the human race deserves no more. Yet he chooses so openly to protect them, even when they would turn on him themselves, and have done so with such fervor that they become inadvertent tools in the advancement towards the realization of my master's goal. He shall be taught correctly one day, and on that day I will have outlived my purpose, and shall be properly disposed of.

            But I digress. The master truly seeks only to protect him from the humans, to protect their kind, the superior beings whose greatness is beyond comprehension of mine or any other being of my lowness. This, of course, he either does not realize or chooses to ignore, the latter being the more likely in my eyes. Even as he protects the humans from his brother, they are feeding off of his kind, keeping them captive for eternity, and yet this suffering he will allow. His speech is that you cannot decide who should suffer, yet he contradicts himself in action, protecting those who blatantly break this rule of his.

            He allows his own kind to suffer, for the cause of another. He is a traitor to his kind. It is beyond any grasp of my mind how he could see more value in a species other than his own. How he could possibly turn his back on those who bore him, who care for him, who are the same as him, and aid those who bring them suffering.

            I don't understand him, and I doubt that I will, ever. He sees his own kind as being low, worthless insects, himself included. How my brother managed to twist his perspective in such a way is beyond me. He welcomes his own suffering, and I suspect he'd happily bring about his own demise if it's what would please his master. I cannot understand how anyone could live this way, how anyone could be made to believe such things to be true.

            He sees no happiness in existence, his view of life having been lowered to see only the pain, only the suffering. Yet there is so much more. Life is the most precious gift of all; its origins are beyond any being's understanding, and the right to take it away belongs solely to whoever gave it to us. No life can be valued above any other, regardless of what that person has done with it. Each life is equal to every other, and that balance must be maintained at all costs.

            It is this that I try to do with my life. I dedicate myself to keeping that balance, to bringing that equality everywhere I go. So long as it is within my power, I will not allow one single life to be lost. Not the life of a human, of a dog, of a rat or even of an ant. And no… not the life of a plant, either.

            He has told me, my brother, many times that humans are by nature violent, destructive, selfish beings, and that these are the reasons why they have to be destroyed. But if that is his reasoning, I do not see how he could consider himself superior. He is more violent than any human I have ever met, more destructive than a human has the ability to be, and he is truly the most selfish person I have ever come across in my long life. Of course, he sees his own violence and destructiveness as righteous, for, in his eyes, he is passing judgment. But killing in the name of justice is still killing; causing death is something that is unjustifiable. There is never an excuse to kill. He kills to preserve the lives of our kind, but killing to preserve life is contradictory. It is not equal, nor is it balanced.

            I cannot allow him to cause any more suffering than he already has. I am not sure how I can stop him without killing, but there is always a way. I need only to look hard enough to find it.

            I hate him.  I truly hate him, yet… I still love him. Despite everything, all he has done and all he has put me through, he is still my brother. That is a bond that cannot be broken; no amount of fighting or arguing or hatred can break a bond like that. And I know that she wouldn't want me to break it, not in her name, or that of any other that he has caused to suffer.

            Maybe that's why it hurts so much.


End file.
